


Pyriscence

by Ugly_Love



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon Gay Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Emetophobia, Endgame r76, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Monster Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Omnic Crisis, Post-Recall, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes Redemption, Second Chances, Slow Burn, Soldier Enhancement Program
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 10:41:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19990804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ugly_Love/pseuds/Ugly_Love
Summary: On the first day of the Soldier Enhancement Program, Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes meet. Thirty years later, they have a conversation.A lot happens in between.





	Pyriscence

**Author's Note:**

> Check end notes for trigger warning.

_**THEN.** _

The first time Jack saw Gabriel Reyes was at the briefing of a new project he’d been selected for, the Soldier Enhancement Program.

As the colonel was speaking, pointing at graphs on his holo-projection, Jack looked down the line of recruits at ease to his left and right, and saw him.

Not that Jack knew, yet, who he was seeing.

He just side-eyed the short, broad, Latino marine with a jarhead cut and mean look and thought, _“Damn.”_

*

On the first day of the program Jack stood in a line of twenty other male recruits until it was his turn in the little curtained booth with the nurse with cold gloves.

Put your belongings in the tray, do you have any electronics, are you on any medication, sign here sign here sign here.

They shaved his head, took his clothes and made him shower in something that smelled like bleach, stung his arm with a fancy hole-puncher ( _ID chip, you won’t even know it’s there in a minute_ ), gave him three pills and fresh fatigues, and sent him out the other side.

Jack walked in to a room of fifty-or-so other skinheads, sitting and leaning and talking at the sterile tables and couches, and found it was a lot harder to tell who was who without hair.

He got the hang of it pretty quick.

*

His roommate turned out to be the marine he’d been eyeing on the initiation day. Reyes.

Jack wasn’t sure if that was a lucky break or pain in the ass, because Reyes took one look at the hand he offered him, said “Hn”, went into their bathroom and shut the door on him.

He saw him later in the breakroom, over in the corner with Kamau, Heart and Villanueva, who Jack heard came in with hair down to her ass and didn’t even flinch when the nurse tied it up and shaved it off. She looked good.

Reyes didn’t smile, but he did laugh, which sort of took Jack by surprise.

Jack ate his pasta with his back to him and listened to Jones talk about his girlfriend’s dog’s stomach ulcers.

*

Reyes didn’t stay an asshole.

Well, he did but it was alright actually. He says stuff that’s so dry it takes Jack a moment to work out he’s joking, and by then Kamau and Villanueva have already done their measured little scoff and moved on, so it sounds like Jack’s laughing at something else they said.

He kept his side of their room clean and took short showers, didn’t hog the charging sockets.

He still said mean things, but not in a mean way, and Jack had known enough older brothers to know how navigate that.

They got on, got paired up in exercises and got on better.

Reyes could drop someone a head or two taller than him with one kick, and favoured choke-holds on the mat. Jack was faster and preferred to use his fists.

Reyes was assigned tactician in team exercises, and Jack found he could follow his orders easier than anyone else’s.

They matched and their results showed it.

Jack didn’t bother hiding how much he looked at him. He knew that Reyes knew he was looking, and he still changed in the room like they didn’t have their own bathroom, walked around shirtless and washed next to him in the showers after training.

One night in Greene’s room after lights-out, the conversation inevitably turned into a sexual pissing contest, and Jack said his bit about the gym bathroom and the star quarterback, the nameless guys at the bar in Bloomington (The bar that was nearly two hours’ drive from his family’s house, though he didn’t mention that), embezzling where he saw fit, like every other soldier in the room.

He watched Reyes’ face in the dark as he spoke, and Greene and Ali probably saw but they weren’t the main event.

Ali said something about his friend’s brother and Reyes leant back on one hand, said “I’m not gay, but head is head, y’know?” and took a swig of his drink.

*

The third time they got called in for a shot, everyone came out feeling wrong.

It was an itchy kind of wrong, hot and sluggish and crawling.

Jack spent a while in a bathroom stall trying to work out if it was that kind of wrong or something else.

It was something else.

He headed back through the corridor, feeling like he was pushing his way through a hot laundry cupboard, thinking that he _really really needed something, I just …_

He passed Kamau and Park sitting on the floor and felt along the wall for the door handle, surprised when it opened under his hand. Reyes was already in there, leaning against the bathroom door shirtless with a sheet around his shoulders. Jack tried to walk past him but their shoulders bumped and all the fever-heat in his body seemed to slurp up to that point like it was being pulled by a syringe, and Reyes reached for him.

They got each other off against the bathroom door, Reyes’ face pressed into his shoulder and sweat slipping between them, breathing in each other’s air.

*

The next morning Jack woke up on the floor on top of Reyes, and barely managed to get the door in front of him open and lurch to the toilet before he was chucking up everything he had in his body and then some. When he finally had a moment to clutch the seat and breath, he realised Reyes had fallen back when he opened the door and hadn’t moved since. Just lying there, shivering on the tile. Jack reached out a sweaty hand and slapped the panic button.

*

For most recruits, the fever lasted out the week, and the unlucky ones were conscious to experience it. By the next week everyone was out of bed, and the higher-ups had switched round all the roommates. Apparently the ‘side effect’ of most of the base waking up in places they weren’t expecting could be bad for morale.

Jack was roomed with Devon, who always smelt like stale biscuits but was a pretty good guy all round.

Reyes sat with Jack and Greene and Heart at dinner they talked about the fever, about Jones getting pulled from the program in a coma, about how weird it was that the mess hall food is so fancy, and didn’t talk about where they each respectively woke up on the night of the Bad Batch.

*

After that they started simulations, which meant multiple days away from base, split into small teams trying to steal unmarked boxes from droid-guarded bunkers, or from each other, sleeping in tents and administering trauma aid to panicked hard-light projections.

Jack’s unit was Team B; Reyes, Kamau, Ali and Spencer, except when you were relying on that and then it wasn’t.

They learnt how to arm a backpack-sized explosive, how to disarm it, how to take down various models of droids and mechs, use pulse weapons, make a Dakota fire hole, and how to kill someone with your hands without anyone in a three metre radius hearing it happen.

Reyes took to stealth like he’d been born into it, and Jack took to bush craft survival skills like he’d been doing it his whole life, which he had. Ali specialised in medical, Kamau in explosives, Spencer in tech.

Jack was still waiting for them to get their Droid Killer Level Three scout badges when they started in on torture survival techniques with Team C.

 _On_ Team C, then vice versa.

They all learnt some things about themselves those weeks.

*

After a week of surgeries and infusions that no one really remembered, and probably not because of the serum, Jack’s team were given kit bags and 24 hours’ notice then loaded onto a hefty quadcopter and briefed for a month-long exercise in Wyoming.

Thirty days later marked their first day of leave in a year, and the whole team was drunk before they’d even chosen the bar.

Reyes had his arm round Jack’s shoulders like they were still squashed up in a snow-filled trench, shouting something at Spencer - _yeah fuck off Mr. Orange, you fucked us hard on that third mission - Hey whaddayou want, the colonel gave me direct fuckin’ orders_ \- while Jack and Kamau sang and Ali waved that goddamn bottle of Malibu like it was something to be proud of.

Kamau disappeared into the mass of bodies on the dance floor as soon as they got in, and Jack followed Ali to the bar; ignoring the sluggish data roll in his head of exits, crowd number, fastest evacuation, fastest termination.

Jack was still trying to order something drinkable, squinting through the red-lit smoke when he noticed a woman at the bar talking to Reyes. She was tall, with braids down her back and she was stroking over his shirt by his collar like there was something on it, and Reyes’ hand was on her waist.

Spencer hooted and threw a balled-up napkin at them, “Kamau said fatigues are a chick magnet, ho-lee shiittt-”

The woman laughed and Reyes pulled her towards his lap with a big smile and Jack turned his back on it, throwing himself into the heaving crowd on the dance floor.

There was a guy with dark skin and bleach blonde hair showing above the heads and shoulders towards the back of the floor, and Jack headed that way.

Later on he fucked him in a sticky toilet stall and went back to base alone.

*

The next morning they were flown back to the barracks, and the morning after that Jack woke to sound of shouting.

It was dark, though it was always dark in the windowless dorm rooms, but the automatic daylight alarm hadn’t kicked in, which meant it was still night.

A clatter and muffled shout outside, Jack slapped the light switch and nothing happened. He rolled out of bed and shook Devon awake, signaled STOP, LISTEN, DOOR.

They headed down the corridor towards light and voices and the common room door.

There were twenty or so recruits standing in the dark around the angry white light of the TV, talking like the room was a church, and watching.

Reyes was near the front, standing with Kamau and Villaneuva, the harsh light of the screen rolling over his face.

“What’s happening?”

Reyes’ eyes didn’t leave the screen.

“Remember those rouge droids in Columbia” Jack nodded, though Reyes didn’t see.

“It’s worldwide.”

Jack opened his mouth to say something, to ask more, but Reyes turned to him, the dark swallowing up his face, just his eyes shining steady with the gloss of the screen.

“The training droids. We need to barricade the doors.”

*

The Omnic Crisis cut through everything. Everything that gave structure, everything that gave control; sleep, food, routine, friendship, family, security.

They were due for leave soon, the first chance to have an uncensored conversation with their families in over a year, and now the phone lines were down, Bloomington was uncontactable and half of LA was burning.

Overnight they were declared ‘Graduates of the US Armed Forces SEP’, split into their assigned teams and shipped around the country like expensive weaponry.

Jack’s unit were armed and flown to New Orleans, to hold the Omnium barricade with three teams of marines and a few remaining local police.

The machines moved as one. If one saw you, they all did, and Reyes took notes, annotated helmet cam footage, analysed and documented and sent everything back through the command chain in hopes of explaining. Understanding.

Information on the God Program came in trickles.

They lost ground, gained it, found an angle, lost it. All internet and phone-based contact was compromised, so they used flairs, smoke, torches, letters, decades-old walkie talkies. They learned.

They were moved to New York, then Texas, Arizona, Nebraska, Montana. After San Antonio Spencer was moved to Maine, to Team E who were down two people. Greene and Zuessman. Bastion Unit.

The remaining team grew closer to the point of co-dependency, and Jack and Gabriel orbited closer to each other than anyone else around them, closer than anyone Jack had moved with before.

Physical contact is honest, straightforward, comforting and easily obtainable.

It was a fixed point: arms round shoulders, strapping each other into their gear and sitting close enough to bump knees, sharing blankets, weapons, food, beds.

Command came easy to Gabriel.

He grew under pressure; like a plant sealed in glass he built with what he had, until eventually the glass couldn’t hold him anymore.

Ever since that first shot of their fifth month in SEP, when Gabriel’s brain nearly leaked out of his ears from a seizure that lasted 45 minutes and ended with him in an induced coma, Gabriel could look at a situation and have four separate plans ready in under a minute, and another four after that if shit went FUBAR. His mind chewed up information like a road miller and reshaped it into physical outcomes. Made paths, space, safety. Killed robots.

Gabriel let his beard grow out, and when they had the time and means Jack sat him down in the tub and shaved his head for him, hands firm on the back of his neck.

Jack killed his first human about eight months in. It wasn’t even a combatant; just a wild eyed, probably shell-shocked drunk who’d had Ali in a headlock and a knife pressing into his thin flesh of his scalp. He’s shouted something and swung the knife back, and Jack pulled the trigger without really thinking about it. He’d leaned over the body, vaguely checking for signs of life, nodded, swung his rifle over his shoulder and helped Ali up.

It didn’t hit him until later. Gabriel was there when it did, and three months later, Jack was there for Gabriel too.

Shrapnel from an exploding shop front cut up Gabriel’s face, and he was left with stark new scars across his nose and cheek, cutting into his hairline. They joked about it later, but Jack remembered the cold terror that pinned him as he saw Gabriel stagger upright out of the smoke; soaked from scalp to collar with blood, the sheer amount of it hiding the severity of the wound.

The medic had pulled the pieces out and sewed him up, and he healed in less than a week.

*

After three months of growing his hair out and longer than that without a shower, Jack walked in out of a rainstorm and Gabriel did a double-take.

_“You’re so goddamn blond!”_

*

They spent two months knee-deep in mud trying to annex the Florida off-shore Omnium, and the eventual self-destruct took six marines, a first Sargent and Ali. 

Kamal Woodgreen Ali, soldier 37.

That night Jack turned the faucet of the motel shower up as hot as it would go and stepped in with all his tac-gear on. 

The water melted the thick muck caked into his body armour, filled the whole room with steam that smelt like rotting plant matter.

Gabriel stepped in after him. He rested his head on the back of Jack’s neck and stayed there as the steam tried to disappear them both. Breathing in the smell of hot mud.

After a while the water around their boots was running clearer, and Gabriel shifted, brought his hands up and started rubbing the mud out of Jack’s hair. Jack closed his eyes and focused on what he could feel, hear, smell. 

He turned around after a while, and they looked at each other.

The next morning they woke up in their own bunks, kitted up and headed out.

*

Three days after that, Gabriel was called into one of the tents that made up their makeshift base by a group of suits, and emerged forty minutes later as the Commander of a new experimental international strike force.

Overwatch.

*

Overwatch felt like progress.

It was a small team, a handpicked collection of the best specialists the world had to offer. Reyes, Morrison, Amari, Wilhelm, Lindholm, Lacroix and Liao. Supported by the scientific research, money and armouries of the United Nations, information moved faster, new equipment made missions quieter, easier, deadlier.

Looking at the crisis from a worldwide viewpoint made the Omnic’s movements more cohesive, less unpredictable. More understanding brought more control, and eased some of the constant tension of living under daily threat.

*

Some days, Jack didn’t recognise himself. 

Every now and then he’d catch his own reflection in a wing mirror or window and not know who he was looking at. The man looking back at him was bigger, broader, more square-jawed and hard-eyed than anything he remembered. Older.

He wondered if Gabriel ever saw it too. 

Gabriel used to be shorter, Jack knew it more as a fact than a memory, and it didn’t match up with the Commander who stood before him now. It wasn’t just what the SEP did to them; the changes mapped out in stretch marks and surgery scars and constant aches, it was _them. They_ were different, just like Ana must be different, like Reinhardt, like Kamau. Like anyone who did what they did.

Overwatch brought progress, but it also brought new rules.

The eyes of the UN were on them, of every country who’d sent their best, and suddenly even their team dynamic was political.

Gabriel seemed to take a step back. 

Anyone else probably wouldn’t see it, but they didn’t see Gabriel with his head on Jack’s shoulder in that fox hole in Alaska, trying not to freeze to death before morning.

They still ribbed and joked and talked and drank, but there was a distance.

Gabriel’s touches were rationed and each one was carefully thoughtless.

Jack thought _Okay_ , pretended like he hadn’t noticed and kept things aggressively casual.

One rare night of rest after a victory on the Bolivia-Paraguay border inevitably lead to a lot of drinking and shouting and loud music.

Soon the general alcohol content was high enough that conversation turned to boasting about sexual escapades, and Ana stood on a chair, drink in hand to educate the room on the virtues of her husband.

Liao swatted at her with a broom like a spider on a ceiling fan and Reinhardt said something to Gabriel, who replied “Nah, I tried some shit when I was younger, but ‘s not my game. I’m on the straight and narrow.”

Jack gave it a few minutes to be sure, then said he’d had had enough drink to fill a horse and left.

He went upstairs, to what used to be the gym in the community centre they’d commandeered as a base, and beat the heavy bag until it split.

The very next time they were drinking with people other than the Strike Team, Jack got a handful of that Ranger who’d been eyeing him up and gracelessly yanked him towards the bathroom.

He kept it up after that. To the point where it became a running joke in the team, a pattern regular enough to keep time by (Oh you mean that mission back in Daniel? No, in Tomás. No, pretty sure it was in Cassian).

Gabriel laughed along with it and even said his bit sometimes, and Jack told himself he didn’t give a fuck.

*

Two years later and there were only a handful of countries in the world the Strike Team hadn’t been to, Overwatch had doubled in size, the Omnics were losing, and Jack was pretty sure he’d fucked himself into romantic numbness.

He was wrong.

The first time Jack saw Vincent, he was climbing over a bombed-out building flanked by a photographer, translator and military escort, in combat boots and a UN issue Kevlar vest reading ‘PRESS’ over a nice blue shirt.

There was blood striping down his face from a cut above his eyebrow, and he grinned and held out a hand to Jack.

“Hey. You guys are Overwatch, right? I’m Vincent Kowalski, I’m a journalist.”

Jack took his hand, gestured to his forehead “Like what you did with the blood.”

*

Vincent had a proper old school New York accent, and was classically handsome in a rough cut good-old-boy kind of way, with a smile that could get him out of a gunfight. Those were the first things Jack noticed about him.

Later on, he noticed that he was about a half-head shorter than Jack, and his broad shoulders lead down to a softness round his hips and stomach that felt good under his hands.

Later than that he noticed that he could see through Jack’s bullshit so easily it was actually embarrassing, and he made good coffee.

He told great anecdotes, laughed like a drunk uncle, liked foreign movies where no one speaks till the last five minutes, reading, fucking and taking unnecessary risks.

It wasn’t long before Jack couldn’t shut up about him.

*

_He had his dark hair down to a buzzcut when Jack first met him, and yeah, maybe that caught his eye. But he liked it when it grew out too. More, actually. He liked the way his body felt; burly but not Super Soldier big, not SEP cookie-cutter perfect. The only scars on him where the one over his eye from when they first met, and a thin surgical seam on his inner elbow from jumping headfirst off a trampoline as a kid._

_It made a nice damn change._

*

For a few years they had a really good thing going.

Jack went to bed happy and woke up happy, could speak to Gabriel alone without any of that unspoken distance getting between his words, and Vincent was taking work that kept him close to the Strike Team’s operations. That same casual charm that made him so good at his job meant he fit in easily with the Strike Team, till an evening at the base wouldn’t look right without Vincent there with his arm around Jack, baiting Lacroix and making Ana laugh, talking with Gabriel about films Jack hadn’t seen.

He even accompanied them on a few ops to run articles on the progress, but turned down the higher-ups offer to be an official UN approved Overwatch Correspondent, going off on one about freedom of the press and un-biased reporting.

“Unbiased my ass.” Gabriel said, taking the lighter Vincent offered, “Not while you’re sleeping in my second in command’s bunk it ain’t _unbiased._ ” “Jack’s not all that” Vincent said, with a big, disinterested shrug that got him an elbow in the ribs from Jack, and another one when he laughed. “You guys do anything dodgy and the world’s gonna hear about it. Might have to do an exposé on Reinhardt singing at the ass crack of dawn when I’m tryina’ sleep through breakfast.”

*

Years later, on a smoggy, humid morning in mid-august, humanity won.

The final battle was fought simultaneously at three of the last major Omniums, with the military force of five separate countries assisting Overwatch in the annexation and demolition of each one, until the omnipresent God Program was cut-off and destroyed inside the Hong Kong Omnium.

The casualties included Lee Jin Park, Lamar Heart, Sophia Maria Villanueva, Tyler Jonson Spencer and Akinyi Kamau.

Soldier’s 27, 81, 62, 43 and 79.

After the hard copy of the God Program virus was retrieved (a burnt little plastic chip, barely bigger than Jack’s thumb), Jack saw Gabriel drop to his knees on the smoking concrete and thought that somehow he’d been injured and Jack hadn’t noticed, but he when he got his arms round him he realised he was crying.

Jack had never seen Gabriel cry before. Not during the SEP, when they were strapped to cots with acid pumping steadily into their veins, not when an OR-14 cut a chunk off his thigh in Nigeria, not when he got the call about his younger sister.

If Gabriel cried he did it alone, and Jack had never really realised it until he was holding him against his chest in front of the steaming shell of the last standing Omnium on earth, his arms squeezing so tight around him it would probably leave marks.

*

The world post-crisis was surreal, and showed no signs of changing.

Overwatch wasn’t disbanded, in part because most of its members didn’t leave. Not everyone had a home or a family left to go to, and those who did still seemed to drift back. 

The first few weeks were a haze of drunken celebrations and singing and crying and laughing, interspersed with strange drifting stretches of quiet and stillness and disbelief. 

The newly empty dorms were filled with extended families; Vincent, Ana’s husband and daughter, Lacroix’s wife, Torbjorn’s tribe of children. Even Gabriel’s older sister and niece for a while.

Eventually the world seemed to rouse itself and there was word from the UN on talks about Overwatch’s future in peace time.

*

They were moved back to the US, to a HQ in a repurposed government building in Boston, and after one of the lengthy round table UN meetings, Gabriel found Jack in the rec room and told him he’d just turned down the position of Strike Commander.

He explained his reasoning over gritty instant coffee and Jack found he agreed with him.

Peace-time Overwatch needed politicians, not soldiers, he’d said. The UN wanted a poster of the man who saved humanity, but it wasn’t what the world needed.

_“This kinda power vacuum is usually left by revolutions, and you know what always happens then. The guys with the biggest guns come in and fill the space.”_

The next day Jack was offered the position instead, and he thought about his Grandad after he was too old to run the farm and had to pass it on. Sitting at the kitchen table for hours, like he was waiting. Just sitting, for years and years until he died.

Jack took the job.

*

The new title marked a change.

The UN got their posters; Jack, Gabriel, Ana and Reinhardt in that order, staring heroically into the horizon in shiny blue uniforms that they only got fitted for last week, and sure as hell didn’t have during the dust and blood and confusion of the crisis.

Vincent moved on to the base, along with most of the Strike Teams’ families, and for a while it was good.

It felt almost like a normal life, like what most people think of when they picture their future: Jack and Vincent sleeping in their bed, Jack napping with his head on Vincent’s lap while he writes, Jack making dinner, Vincent reading, arguing over TV series’, laughing, fucking in the shower.

But after a year or two “Strike Commander Morrison” was a world famous face, and keeping a handle on Overwatch’s constant expansion took up all of his time and then some.

Vincent stuck at it for a while, but after nearly a year of seeing Jack a few hours a week, he told him he couldn’t “spend any longer sitting on my fuckin’ thumb in this empty Olympic village” and started taking jobs overseas.

*

Blackwatch was an unknown animal to Jack. 

Sometimes their missions overlapped, but mostly Blackwatch operated entirely independent of its predecessor, sharing relevant information and not the means used to get it.

Gabriel took to the command roll like he always did. With ease and intimidating efficiency.

*

The world was rebuilding itself, regaining structure, wealth, technology and intelligence, and Overwatch grew with it.

They had watch points in almost every country, were involved in everything from civil wars to local councils, and the HQ was being moved to a sprawling new complex in Switzerland.

Jack and Vincent had a few bitter arguments about it before agreeing to try long distance.

*

Gabriel came back from New Mexico with a half-dead heavily-armed teenage hoodlum in his wake, and filibustered Jack’s office until he agreed to let him stay, saying things like _would I do this if I thought I was putting my people at risk_ and _look at the progress we’ve made with Shimada._

As Overwatch grew and the stakes kept upping, Jack’s relationship with Gabriel changed.

He knew even less about what he did in Blackwatch ( _plausible deniability_ the UN lawyer said), but the blind trust forced them closer than they’d been in years.

It felt almost like the early days of Overwatch, back in the crisis. None of the Strike Team got much time off base, and they were always in each other’s space; the constant camaraderie a balancing point to the constant stress.

*

Jack envied Gabriel, sometimes.

Jack hadn’t been out in the field since the day he accepted his position, and he missed it. He felt detached; floating in his bubble-wrap of command and speeches and public image consultants.

He envied what Gabriel had with his team, with McCree and Shimada particularly; the easy ribbing, eye-rolls and arms round shoulders, the unspoken trust.

McCree resented him, for what he wasn’t exactly sure, but he could take a few guesses.

Honestly, Jack couldn’t blame him.

*

Vincent visited regularly to start with, then less, then video calls, then less.

Untill one day Jack hadn’t answered his phone in almost three weeks, and when finally did he already knew what was coming.

There was none of the heat of their arguments, Vincent just looked tired, and Jack felt numbly resigned.

_“I’ve got a life here in New York, Jack. And I love you, but I don’t need you right now.”_

He rubbed his hand over his face, looked infinitely tired.

_“And you need me, but…”_

He could have cut Jack to pieces but he had the good grace to leave him with his dignity.

*

_Jack could have kept telling himself he never knew, if not for one time, in the last of their few, awful fights; standing on opposite sides of the kitchen in the dark, seeing the first hint of that unbearable weariness on Vincent’s face._

_“It was never me you wanted anyway.”_

*

Jack thought he was alright for a good week.

He was in the rec room, with most of the old Strike Team (their weekly scheduled hang out, started as a wellbeing measure when someone realised they hadn’t seen Jack outside of a meeting in three weeks).

It was late, and the rest of the team had headed off one by one until it was just Jack and Gabriel watching shitty TV like they were still twenty one and didn’t have the weight of the world on their shoulders.

It was stupid, when it happened.

They were watching a dumb rom-com, and the main character was breaking up with her fiancé on the steps of a big fancy house in the rain. Jack felt his eyes getting hot, thought for a bewildered moment _“damn, I’m really invested in this movie”_ , and then he was sobbing into his hand, like he could physically hold in the ugly, rusty sounds coming out of him, legs pulling up to his chest.

Gabriel said “Shit, I was wondering when you were gonna feel that”, and put his arms round Jack’s shoulders and pulled him over, getting half up on his knees so he could squeeze him close and rest his chin on top of Jack’s head, saying “sshhh big guy, I got you”.

*

Then Lacroix’s wife went missing and everything went to shit.

Gabriel knew something and Jack cornered him in his own office until he told him what it was, plausible deniability be damned.

Talon.

They’d been on Blackwatch’s radar for a while; responsible for some of the long, unnamed missions that left Gabriel quiet and distracted when they returned.

The whole HQ was tense despite Talon’s existence being top level clearance only, but paranoia is catching.

Then, inexplicably, Amelie was recovered. Alive.

In an empty boarding school in Calais, zip tied to a radiator and surrounded by enough abandoned equipment to suggest an organization, but nothing that could be traced.

Wiped computers, clothes with no prints or fibres, a half-eaten pot noodle on a generator containing no DNA whatsoever.

They were being mocked.

Gabriel wanted Amelie in quarantine, but Jack cleared her.

Two days later Gerard was found dead in their bed, throat slit.

No Amelie.

*

Next was Amari.

MIA, a lot of blood but no body recovered.

And Jack thought it couldn’t get worse than that, not Amari, but then Mccree walked out with no notice and there was something wrong with Gabriel.

Jack was paralysed in a sea of international outrage, growing humanitarian issues around Omnic treatment coming to a head in several countries, the whole base looking over their shoulders every minute and random security checks destroying any possible illusion of calm, and Gabriel wouldn’t talk to him.

He was distant, tense, absent from base for long stretches of time with no contact, turned up to meetings with injuries Jack had no explanation for.

Then Shimada left, and Jack knew it was worse, it had to be, but there were civil wars in three UN countries and the council was ordering suppression measures they’d never had clearance for, and he hadn’t seen Gabriel in almost a month.

Then, finally, he was in a meeting with the Iranian ambassador when his personal com went off.

There was only one ID that wasn’t set to silent, so Jack answered it.

Seeing the location he had a moment to be surprised - _Gabriel’s on base? For how long?_ \- and then it was Gabriel’s voice in his ear, out of breath and shouting -  
“Jack, you need to get out! _Run!_ Overwatch is compromised, the building-”

-and by then Jack was shoving the ambassador out the office door, slamming his fist on the alarm, turning towards the corridor and-

That’s it.

The memories stop there, like a pirate video that won’t load, black highlighter on a letter to a loved one.

There might have been more time between then and the first explosion, or that might have been the exact moment the air ignited around him and shrapnel lodged itself in the cartilage of his face.

Either way, he knows what happened when he woke up.

_**NOW.** _

The air is damp. It smells like basement, like old clothes on old people, like moss.

Soldier 76 holds his rifle close to his body to keep from knocking against the over-packed furniture in the hallway, and holds his breath. There’s so much dust in the air it looks like he’s in water; deep and still, muffling sound and slowing his movements.

The com in his ear hisses a little as it comes online, and he hears Winston’s voice.

“Movement in the third apartment. Stay on your toes, people.”

76 still isn’t used to it, having a com again. Being contactable, working with other people. 

Compromising.

This raid is going to be an absolute shit storm and Winston and Mercy know it just like he does.

The Reaper does not leave traces.

He doesn’t misstep, he doesn’t miscalculate, and they’ve never once known his whereabouts before he’d already painted someone’s brains across a wall.

And yet here they are, raiding an abandoned tower block in Paris on word that the Reaper is using the 9th floor as a safehouse.

76 steps around the mosaic of a shattered mirror, stops at the door to the second apartment, back against the wall. Agent Oxton is behind him, both pulse pistols out.

They’d left Agent Song in the maintenance elevator, her MEKA standing huge and silent in the dark, waiting.

Just as he raises his hand to signal, a sharp _crack_ of pulse fire splits the murky air, followed by a _boom_ that ricochets round the concrete walls, deafening them.

 _Shotgun_ , 76 thinks just as the coms explode with action-

“Contact!” dos Santos shouts in his ear as Tracer appears in a blue flash beside him, and Winston’s voice cuts over the echoing gunfire in his com-

“Group two are engaging, target is in the adjacent hallway-”

The elevator doors screech on their rails as they shudder open, the HUD of D.va’s mech flicking on in the dark as it takes a heaving step out of the elevator, shaking the floor beneath them.

76 and Tracer have reached the blind bend at the end of the corridor when another shotgun blast shakes the walls, then a scuffle and the sub-sonic _whoomp_ of Lucio’s amplifier, so sharp and close it sounds like it’s coming from all around them.

Silence.

The Reaper steps out from around the corner, six feet of curling blackness with a shotgun in each hand, the hard edges of his mask just showing in the sickly green from the MEKA’s HUD.

He’s got Lucio tucked under one arm like a fucking animal, the blunt nose of his shotgun pressed into the side of his head.

No one moves.

The Reaper tilts his head, bird-like. 

“I’m going to drop the boy.”

The voice is rumbling, metallic. 76 has only heard it a handful of times, and each word of it replays in his head when he lies awake in the dark.

“Then I’m going to put my hands up. And you’re going to escort me to your base.”

There’s a silence, wavering and unsure, and then,

“Why?”

Winston’s voice comes through the speaker on 76’s com, from where he’d been watching the exchange through the kit cams.

The Reaper holds up the shotgun he’d had pressed to Lucio’s trembling head, showing it to them, and drops it. It dissipates as it hits the floor, rushing outwards as thick smoke that curls around his feet. Soundless.

“I have some information you’re going to be interested in.”

*

The Gibraltar base is bustling when the transport lands, despite the fact that the sun is barely scraping the horizon.

Agents old and new stand at the ready, namely to guard, mostly to stare as the Reaper comes down the ramp into the hanger, metal boots echoing on the concrete, his hands cuffed behind him.

They were more of a gesture, really. The older members of the Strike Team know what kind of damage the Reaper could do even in handcuffs.

The air is thick with tension that clings like tar as he’s brought underground, into a secure room by the holding cells.

It’s been hastily turned into something resembling a meeting room; a long metal table down the length of the room and plastic chairs, already filled with every high-ranking member who wasn’t already on the mission. Winston is at the head, his huge hands folded on the table.

The Reaper is sat down in a metal chair a good few metres from the table, and one of the soldiers escorting him sets about cuffing his legs to it. He’s wearing a thick metal collar with a little light blinking on it; an experimental anti-dissipation collar Mercy had clicked on to him as soon as she had the chance. It’s never been tested, for obvious reasons, and as the door is shut and bolted behind them, they can only hope to god that it works.

The Reaper sits as still as a dead thing, back straight, feet planted wide. Watching.

There’s a few moments of aching silence as Winston flicks through something on a tablet, letting the Reaper and the rest of the room stew.

“You know who I am.”

Several people jolt, and Winston looks up. Reinhardt has his hands clasped tight in front of him, the only one not trying to hide his pained grimace.

“Gabriel Reyes, former Blackwatch Commander.” Winston’s voice is carefully level.

The Reaper nods.

“Good. I wasn’t looking forward to that drama.”

76 digs his fingers into his palm, breath feeling hot inside his mask.

Winston nods, taps out something on his tablet, sits up straight to address him.

“Before we continue, we have to verify that you are who you say you are. Please remove the mask, Reaper.”

Underneath the hood is a close-fitting black helmet that fits seamlessly onto the mask, and if 76 didn’t know better he’d say he was looking at an omnic.

For a horrible moment he thinks maybe he _is_ , maybe Gabriel’s dead and this _thing_ is just here to-

Reaper pushes the release catches on his temples and panels around his jaw pull back to let him slide the whole headpiece off and… it’s him.

Sitting at the end of the room, cuffed to a dentist’s chair, is a dead man.

Gabriel’s skin is lead-grey and slightly glossy like it’s made of something humans aren’t normally made of, and ripped in huge gashes across his jaw and head. He should be bleeding but he isn’t, and as they watch the hole in his cheek creeps closed, pulling itself together to hide his teeth just as the gouge in his skull pulls apart enough to show the wet folds of brain matter.

One of his eyes has no white left, so red it’s almost black, and his gaze flicks across the room towards-

Jack pushes himself up so fast he nearly knocks his chair backwards, and is out the room before Winston can even call after him.

*

The next week or so is strange.

76 goes to meetings, goes to training, and stays on top of all of Winston’s updates about the Reaper, but does everything he can not see him in person.

At first that’s not hard.

The Reaper is confined to Floor -4 unless supervised, and agreed to Overwatch’s conditions of 24 hour surveillance, the anti-dissipation collar, and allowing Mercy and Winston to study him physically and psychologically on top of the regular ‘interviews’ about his information on Talon.

The interviews are recorded, and although the intel on Talon is top secret, it was agreed that all the original Strike Team members would have access to the recordings.

Practically, it helped to have people who’d known Gabriel Reyes assess Reaper’s mental state (Only Torbjorn had actually voiced it, blunt and blithe like always; “We don’t want another Amelie situation”), but that’s not the only reason.

“You deserve to know.” Winston said, sitting round the small meeting table with 76, Mercy, Reinhardt, Torbjorn and Ana; Reaper’s files a blue haze on the holo-projector between them.

“We all deserve to know the truth. To rebuild Overwatch as a force that can be trusted, we need to understand our past, and address our own failings.”

Next to the old mugshot in Reaper’s file (A grainy satellite image from Krakow, the white mask just visible against black murk) is a new one. Taken three days before, it’s Gabriel, hood down, looking straight into the camera, the gash through his cheek wide open this time.

“And maybe, once we’ve finally put this chapter to rest, we can use it to write a new one.”

*

The interview recordings keep being sent out every week, and after being cleared for contact by three separate phycologists, Reaper starts making appearances around the base.

76 heard about the first time from Lucio: a few of the team were in the break room, distracted by a big game on the tv, when the Reaper walked in to the kitchen in sweatpants and starting making coffee. It took until someone turned around to actually notice he was there.

He doesn’t wear the coat or mask, weather out of choice or to avoid startled agents pulling weapons on him, 76 isn’t sure, but it’s somehow even stranger without.

He’s usually in fatigues and big hoodies; oversized dark clothes that cover as much as he can, sometimes with a medical mask.

76 sees him when he’s walking through the hangar at dusk; up on a viewing platform, talking to Mercy with a mug in one hand, leaning on the railings.

He keeps his head down and keeps walking, ignoring the prickle of eyes on the back of his neck.

He sees him in the roof garden with Zenyatta, in hallways, across the yard, and after around four weeks he walks past the rec room to see him sitting on the couch with D.va, losing at Mario Kart while Lucio sits on a beanbag to the side shouting about banana peels, looking like he’d started at a wary distance but had forgotten about it at some point.

76 has been military more than long enough to know when he’s being watched, and he feels it every time Reaper is around. He doesn’t look to check.

*

Eventually even the old guard aren’t keeping their distance anymore.

Ana brings it up when they’re up on one of the sea-facing balconies having tea, the low sun painting the evening gold.

“You should talk to him, you know.” She says unprompted, and Jack considers saying ‘who’, but thinks about the look he’d get in response and decides against it.

He says “hn” and avoids her eye, taking another slurp of this blue-ish herbal stuff she’d given him.

(“No caffeine. You need to relax and stop walking around like you are smuggling a rifle up your ass, Jack”)

“His intel is sound. Winston has been talking about running an op on it.”

He doesn’t answer but she doesn’t seem bothered by it. She just leans against the rail with the fancy little cup in her strong hand, looking out to sea with her steel grey hair curling over her shoulder; tall and striking and handsome like Jack never thought he’d see again. The eyepatch, the lines around her mouth, the way her tattoo has smudged blue with age; all of it a proud trophy of her arrogant drive to live. 

He doesn’t see it the same on himself, but he’s pretty sure he hasn’t earned it like she has.

She turns her eye to him and Jack wasn’t quick enough looking away, finds himself pinned. 

“Really, Jack, even if he was like Amelie, if he killed us all in our sleep tomorrow, would you die happier knowing that you never spoke to him?”

She speaks casually, like she isn’t holding him still with her look.

“You have time, now. Don’t waste it.”

*

That night 76 sits in his bunk and gets up the audio of the second interview on his hand-held.

He looks at the little grey bar for a bit, then drags it back to a random timestamp. The hollow rumble of Reaper’s voice in his ear jolts him, and he grits his teeth against the urge to rip the headphones out, focusing on the transcript rolling across the screen.

00:34:54 [-duceus staff. I spent a few months like that. Couldn’t think through the pain, couldn’t even hold a solid form long enough to try. They found me when I was pretty much a smoking pile of limbs, in this back alley in-]

He moves it again, drops it.

00:57:03 [-but I was more lucid than they thought, even at the start. They kept using these tranqs on me that were ‘sposed to knock me out cold, but they only worked a few minutes. SEP or the constant regeneration, I dunno. Honestly I think that’s the only reason I’m sitting here now, and not back there like Widow.]

[_The Widowmaker was still with Talon when you left?]

[pause. 0.43 seconds]

[_I didn’t want to leave her there. But I couldn’t risk my cover. Anything she knew, if they asked her she’d have to tell them.]

Jack jerks it forward, drops it again.

01:15:20 [-alon grew inside Overwatch. Under my fucking nose, under Jac-]

Again.

01:53:14 [-kept the cache in a garage in Al Minya, wiped the hard drive after each one. You wouldn’t fuckin’ believe how many faces you’d recognise outta the big names in Talon. Not just Overwatch, I’m talking world leaders. Not that I was around the decision-making end of things much, they kept me in my kennel. My fuckin’ handler thought I didn’t even understand his-]

Again.

02:21:28 [-ings I don’t remember. Sometimes, I felt like I couldn’t even trust my own past. I’d remember something, I’d read the report and it was different. Coulda been from years ago in Blackwatch, or the day before. I saw pictures of myself in places I didn’t remember going, I’d start out on a mission and then I’m back on base and it’s already over. I… [pause. 0.34 seconds] that’s why I came back, now. Thought I could stick it out till I had everything, but… I was losing myself.]

Jack hits pause and pushes the hand-held away, letting a breath shudder out of him as he looks up into the dark.

He stays that way for a while.

*

Winston calls a meeting to announcing he’s clearing Reaper for active service, and they’re training together as a team by the end of the week.

They gather in the simulation room in sweats and fatigues, their weapons unloaded and fitted with censors, and Reaper is there with his hood down, no mask, listening to the briefing along with everyone else.

They run the training op in pairs, and Jack isn’t sure whether he’s surprised or not when he’s paired with Reaper.

Fighting together is seamless, like finally picking up your own weapon again after years just making do.

It’s perfect, and it’s easy.

So much so that it hurts, especially when they find themselves cut off and surrounded by the white silhouettes of hard-light soldiers, and he feels Reaper’s back press up against his own as he covers him, the familiar _boom_ of duel shotguns as reassuring as it is deafening.

When the objective is complete the warehouse and bodies flicker out of existence around them, leaving them panting in the middle of the huge white room, the other agents appearing as the walls melt between them.

Reaper pulls up his blank HUD mask and turns to him, grinning, breathless and exhilarated, and that hurts too, makes his chest tighten up with something like panic.

Jack is pretty sure he’s panting too, knuckles white around his rifle though his stance has gone slack, unable to look away.

“Gabriel.”

He says it like it’s new information, and Gabriel nods, still grinning, and drops his shotguns.

“That’s me.”

*

Leaving the simulation room they meet Ana and Reinhardt on the way, and end up back in the rec room, sitting around the table with coffee and tea like three out of four of them weren’t legally dead until last year.

It feels almost like old times, if not for the constant effort they’re all putting in to keep it that way.

Ana is cool like always, and Reinhardt brings himself to tears reminiscing about an early mission in Ethiopia when Jack and Gabriel were stranded in a telecom tower and Ana single-handedly picked off every omnic in running distance to get them out.

Jack tries to do his bit upholding the casual atmosphere, but his throat and chest feel tight and he only manages a few words.

Reaper reminds Jack of Gabriel after those long, unnamed missions towards the end. Distant and unreadable, eyes always on the exits, looking away while he speaks. But whenever the sickly, squeezing sense of foreboding starts to push its way up his throat, there’s a sudden flash of Gabriel from twenty years ago; his smile and sharp humour, an eye roll or unimpressed look that are so far away and so familiar that it makes his stomach roil.

“-not as bad as that night in Cairo, when we had to share a base with the S.A.S squad” Ana says, tipping her cup towards Gabriel who folds his arms, “Hey, not my fault their Major was such a goddamn hardass. Gotta learn to take a joke someday.”

 _Gabriel’s body is in the ground in Arlington_ Jack’s mind tells him as he watches his dead, smiling friend. The information rolls through his head as he takes a cup from Ana, nods to something Reinhardt asks him.

_Reaper doesn’t have a brain. Or a heart, lungs, any organic parts. His body is a medical-grade nanite colony, whose consciousness was uploaded from the dying body of Gabriel Reyes as Doctor Zeigler desperately tried to resuscitate him with every option she-_

Gabriel is looking at him, he can feel it before he actually sees.

He’s been looking at him a lot. More than most people normally would in company.

“-ck? Jack?”

He blinks and turns to Ana, who’s holding a teapot and looking at him expectantly.

“I said, would you like another cup?”

Jack looks down at his cold tea and back at the table, at Gabriel who’s still looking right back at him.

“I- No thanks, I think I’m gonna go to bed. Long day.”

He’s already up and tucking his chair in, not looking at Gabriel, but he’s thankful when all Ana says is “Alright. Sleep well, Jack.”

*

He doesn’t.

He sleeps for a while, then wakes up around one and lies still in the dark until the shadows start to move, then gets up.

He pulls on cargo pants and a worn old sweatshirt, laces up his boots on autopilot that has him reaching for his rifle when he’s finished. He puts it back down and grabs a mug instead, and heads for the kitchen.

He’s leaning against the sea-facing rails of the yard with a cigarette in his mouth, looking up at the endless arc of constellations above him when he hears something move.

Footsteps come first, then Reaper walks out of the dark of the hanger, hands in his pockets.

He comes up to the railing, leaving two soldier’s worth of space between them as he leans, looking out at the black horizon.

“Can’t sleep?”

Jack’s still not used to the voice. Gabriel but deeper, more rough. It’s better without the mask, but the metallic edge is still there.

“Yeah. You?”

“Don’t need much of it anymore.” Gabriel says, eyes still on the sea ahead of them. The gash in his cheek isn’t too bad today, but the head wound’s making up for it.

Gabriel turns and Jack gets caught staring. Ridiculously, he feels his cheeks start to heat up. 

Gabriel just looks at him, like he’s sizing something up.

“Do I scare you?” He says finally, face giving nothing away except for a tight pinch between his eyebrows.

Jack considers his options, but there’s something about the honesty of the question that decides for him.

“Yeah. But not for any of the good reasons.”

Gabriel nods and turns back to sea.

Jack thought he might leave it there, but Reaper makes a grating sound that’s almost a laugh.

“Guess that’s nothing new, though. Pretty sure I scared the shit outta you back in SEP.”

“Till I found out you were all talk.”

“And I found out you weren’t. Just about managed to scrape my pride back together after that time you nearly put me to sleep in the ring.”

Gabriel says it fondly, like he’s not talking about the time Jack hit him so hard he got concussion.

“You got me back good.” Jack says, his voice coming out a little lower and softer than he was expecting. 

That knockout is pin in their history. Once Gabriel had managed to un-cross his eyes he’d looked up at Jack from the floor with something other than snide disinterest for the first time. The next day, Gabriel took his tray over to Jack and Greene at lunch.

There’s a moment of quiet that sits between them, unthinking and comfortable. The breeze stirs them and there’s no sound except for their breathing, the whistle of wind through the com tower.

Jack isn’t really aware of it to savour it until it’s over; Gabriel shifting his weight and exhaling, eyes flicking over to Jack. 

Jack was just starting to realise he’d never seen Gabriel broadcast his emotions like that either when he breaks the silence.

“Jack… there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

There’s a whole catalogue of conversations that stir up in his mind like silt in a current at those words, and the swirling mess of it seems to settle in his stomach and fingertips - _I know you broke your brother’s bike, your mother’s in hospital, Kamau’s in the medbay, there was another bomb_ -

“Dying put some stuff in perspective.” Gabriel says, and his even tone pulls Jack back down to the present. He’s still looking out at the water, voice low.

“Thinkin’ about how I lived my life, the stuff I’ve done, and didn’t do. I always thought I lived my life how I wanted. I worked hard to get to a place where I didn’t have to follow orders I didn’t like. Looking back on it though, I was foolin’ myself for a long, long time.”

Jack watches him, cigarette forgotten in his hand.

“A lot of things hurt to look back on with what I know now. Decisions I made in Blackwatch, missions, the last thing I said to Jesse. But…”

Gabriel swallows, and his eyes don’t leave the black sea, “what I couldn’t stop thinking about, what really fuckin’ scared me the most is that I could have lived my whole life without ever telling you how I feel about you.”

Time seems to slow down around Jack.

Gabriel has turned and is looking right at him, but the air is thick and pressing, weighing him down and he feels cold, so suddenly cold, like the moment of shocked inaction, the split second when you see the flash on a rooftop before a shot splits the air.

“Without telling you that I-”

“Shut the fuck up Gabriel.”

Gabriel’s eyes widen a little, but he doesn’t look all that shocked.

Not as much as Jack wants him to be, wants him to be feeling it too like hot ice in his blood, like whatever it is that’s cold and burning in Jack, pricking his neck like nausea and searing in his skull.

“Jack”

Gabriel looks so goddamn fucking calm, and takes a step forward like he might reach for him-

Jack puts both hands on his shoulders and shoves him, hard, vaguely aware that his breathing is loud and ragged-

“Fuck you!”

“Jack”

“No, _fuck you! Fuck you_ , you fucking-” Jack closes that distance and hits him, the movement easy and instinctual like it’s been for most his life, and Gabriel stumbles back a few feet and then just stands there, hands at his sides and looking at Jack, not even fucking-

Jack shoves him again, “Thirty fucking years, Gabriel! Thirty _fucking_ years!”

Jack bears his teeth and folds him with a gut punch. The sound of his own frustration is loud but even Jack is aware he’s not hitting as hard as he could be.

Gabriel drops easily under the force of it, not even trying to keep his footing, and in his surprise Jack goes down with him. He lands heavy with his hands still knotted in Gabriel’s collar, and his instinct is to pull back and hit him again, but Gabriel is still just looking at him with his mouth set in a hard line, and suddenly Jack doesn’t want to.

Jack holds his eyes and collar, panting, fury boiling, and sits back on his heels over Gabriel’s stomach.

Gabriel is still just giving him that steady look and Jack deflates, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Fuck…”

Gabriel tilts his head, arms still splayed out by his sides and looking in no hurry to move.

“You wanna go get some hot coco?”

*

They end up in Jack’s room, since the idea of being interrupted in the middle of this whatever-the-fuck-this-is is too much to deal with.

Jack sits up at the head of the bed, mug in hand, boots leaving dusty streaks across the comforter.

Gabriel sits himself down near the end of the bed, back against the wall.

It looks almost like those nights back in the SEP, sitting in someone’s bunk playing cards, or waiting out the pain of the shots. It doesn’t feel like that, though.

There are so many things Jack wants to ask that just thinking them wares him out.

There’s a good place to start, though.

“When?”

Gabriel takes a gulp of his coco and exhales, long and slow.

“Our first deployment during the crisis. After SEP.”

Jack doesn’t look at him, takes a slow, measured sip of his drink.

“The night we spent in that blown-out S.T.O.R.K rig after we lost the convoy. I mean, it was before that, but that’s when I really let myself think it.”

Jack remembers that night. Gabriel had a piece of shrapnel the size of Jack’s hand sticking out of his hip, and they spent the night under a tarp, with Jack propped up on his rifle trying to stay awake to keep guard, stroking helplessly over Gabriel’s head on his lap as shock started to rattle him apart.

Jack hides his face in his mug and tries to keep his hands from shaking, but makes Gabriel wait while he takes his time with it.

“That was a long goddamn time ago.”

It’s a dig but he can’t help it, the anger still stewing inside of him - _thirty fucking years_ -

Gabriel lets his head tilt back with a hollow laugh, low and scraping.

“Yeah. Yeah it was.”

Jack doesn’t ask, couldn’t anyway with the anger still squeezing his words, but Gabriel answers anyway.

“I was scared. It’s that goddamn simple. I’d never-”

He cuts himself off, rubs a hand over his beard.

“You remember in SEP, I said I’d done shit with guys before.”

Jack nods. Gabriel’s still got his hand over his mouth.

“That wasn’t… true. ‘least not the way I made it sound.”

Gabriel’s eyes are somewhere over on the far wall, the crease between his eyebrows standing out heavy.

“Where I came from, you didn’t do shit like that. Nobody did. But still, I was nineteen, I was interested, I thought I was tough enough to do what I want. And, y’know, the fact that no one else was doing it, that it was this big taboo, just made it more exciting.”

Jack’s mug drops down to his lap, unable to keep up the pretence that he isn’t looking as Gabriel keeps talking. His voice is rough and low, scraping around the words like it takes effort to get them out.

“An’ then I was at this big house party, and this guy, this _big_ fucking guy gave me a _look_ like I’d never seen another man look at me before, and I thought ‘This is it. This is my chance.’”

Gabriel takes a sip of his drink, eyes still looking through the wall.

“So, I followed him into the bathroom. People saw me do it, guys from my street, and I thought I didn’t give a fuck.”

Gabriel laughs and it’s got that flat, metallic edge to it, “I don’t know what the fuck I was expecting us to do. I don’t know what on the list would have been what I wanted, I just… thought I could handle anything, I don’t know. But he-”

Gabriel makes a sort of downwards shoving motion with his hand then swipes it through the space like he’s trying to clear the air of it.

“He wasn’t nice about it. And I thought, ‘maybe this is okay, maybe this is what I want’, but then he fuckin’ slapped me across the face and I bit him, and it turned into a nasty fucking fight. And you know what a short shit I was back then, but he was _slow._ ”

The way he says that word, _slow_ , with his lip curling up like that reminds Jack of things he’d only ever read about Gabriel. In Blackwatch reports, classified and redacted, wiped from security footage.

More of the Reaper’s gravel is in his voice now, pitching it lower that Gabriel’s ever had been, words coming easier.

“I beat the piss out of him and half the assholes there came in to watch. My friends thought I went in there just to beat him, and I let them think that.”

Gabriel looks up suddenly, right in his eyes, and there’s so many lives for that face; some he recognises, some he doesn’t.

The Reaper sits back and takes a sip of his hot cocoa, and says with Gabriel’s voice, “And after that I was still attracted to guys, but I was angry about it. ‘S why I was so pissy with you when we first met.”

Reaper’s lips curve up into Gabriel’s smirk, “That n’ I was mad the whole Big Blond Quarterback thing actually worked on me.”

It took a moment for Jack’s brain to turn that over, and then,

“…Wait, you…?”

He doesn’t know how to say it and he doesn’t want to try, but Gabriel picks it up for him.

“You’re surprised I thought you were hot? C’mon Jack, you had my dick in your hand two weeks later, is it really that big a shock?”

Jack tries to reconcile that with the Gabriel he knew back then; _Reyes_ , shorter and angrier, clean-shaven, still with the same resting bitch face. Gorgeous and completely unapproachable. _Liking him._

“I’d never met anyone who was just _out_ like you. It was that confidence. Like when I caught you staring at my fucking dick in the showers, in front of everyone- yeah, _that_ fucking time-” 

Gabe says as Jack grimaces, murmurs a “Sorry” into his hand, _Fuck, I was such an asshole kid -_

“-And I caught you but you didn’t stop, just watched me watching you. Yeah it pissed me off but it was _hot_ , and that just pissed me off more.”

Gabriel sobers, looking away from him again.

“An’ then after that night with the Bad Batch…” 

Gabriel looks down into his coco as he swirls it around, taking a moment.

“When you like someone, you give them power over you. And I was scared of that. ’S why I fucked around on that first night we had off base, I wanted to let you know had options, that you weren’t all that to me. I didn’t know back then that we didn’t have time for that shit. Feels like you’re always gonna have time to do whatever the fuck you want at that age. _Fuck_ , we were so _young_ , Jack-”

Gabriel breaks off and looks up at the ceiling, lets out a breath. He continues low on the exhale.

“And then Overwatch started, and I couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk my position, your position, the team dynamic, our friendship. I stamped it out and put it right at the back of my brain and kept it that way. Kept going like that for years. Hid it so well I thought it was gone, and then you met Vincent, and I thought ‘That’s it. That’s fine.’”

Jack has an urge to reach out and touch him, to ground himself, maybe, he’s not sure, and he wants to say something but he doesn’t know what, and he’s worried that if he break’s Gabriel out of this- this _searing_ honesty, he’ll stop talking and Jack will never know.

He finds something, and asks it though he’s pretty sure he knows the answer, voice coming out a little hoarse.

“You never tried it with other men?”

Gabriel shakes his head.

“I couldn’t do it. I mean, it’s not that I didn’t _look_ , but it reminded me too much of you, and I was trying to avoid that. An’ it was just easier, to tell myself that whole thing wasn’t for me. Easier to tell you that, and everyone else.”

Gabriel is quiet for a moment, and then,

“You remember that Blackwatch agent, Castle?”

That hits Jack out left field a bit, and squints, tries to see a face.

“Was that the guy you fired after a month?”

Jack can just about see his file picture; tall, burly guy with a jarhead cut, kind of statuesque but with his nose broken a few too many times.

“Yeah, that’s the guy. You know he tried it on with me?”

Jack wasn’t entirely sure how to take that, but he raises his eyebrows. “Bold move.”

“Yeah, he was an arrogant son of a bitch. Always acting like he knew better, challenging my fucking orders in front of the whole team, giving me that _look_ like I couldn’t see him doing it, like everyone couldn’t see him doing it. He got right up to fuckin’ kissing me before I shoved him off, but he held on, got right up in my face and said ‘I know what you want.’”

Jack can’t imagine it. Even trying makes his stomach roil with unease.

“Is that why you fired him?”

Despite what he’s saying, Gabriel looks so casual they could be talking about the goddamn weather.

“Nah. I mean, he didn’t get off easy, but… he was right. He wouldn’t a gotten that far if I’d stopped him sooner, but it was just… nice, I guess. Being _wanted_ like that.”

“Plenty of people wanted you.” Jack says, though he knows what he means. A newbie’s fear-crush isn’t comparable.

“And the next mission he nearly got Genji fucking killed leaving his position, _that’s_ why I fired the motherfucker. Stripped his rank and took his weapon right there in the field, I think McCree nearly pissed his pants though for once it wasn’t him getting shouted at. Last time I ever took on a UN-vetted agent.”

Gabriel pulls his boots up on to the bed, resting the mug on his knees. He’s in profile, and Jack can only see his blood-black eye, the light reflected in it strangely. 

“Anyway,” Gabriel says, waving a hand like he’s dismissing his last few words, “It was fine. I was fine, everything was fine. For years. Right up until that night I broke up with Omolade.”

 _Omolade_ , the image comes together in Jack’s mind like an old target profile, _the last one of Gabriel’s few, short-lived relationships. An Overwatch lawyer, tall and beautiful and intimidating in sharp suits and big, expensive earrings with her hair natural and buzzed down. Jack remembered thinking she reminded him of Villanueva, except, as it turned out, with a pretty wide mean streak and no patience for men who want to talk about their feelings. It was an impressively bad break-up for such a short relationship._

“I called you, and while you were talking to me I realised, ‘this is it for me. I can keep trying, but there isn’t anyone else.’ And I just… didn’t know what to do about it.”

_This is it for me._

Jack had said that once. Into Gabriel’s shoulder in the middle of the night in front of the break room TV, with that shitty rom-com still playing behind them.

_If I can’t make it work with Vince then that’s it._

Jack realises his mug is shaking in his hand and drops it down into his lap, swallowing hard.

Gabriel’s voice is quiet.

“And after that, I couldn’t avoid it. I felt it every time I looked at you, like it was the first few weeks of SEP, worse than that, worse than I’d ever felt before in my _life_. All this stuff I’d almost forgotten I was hiding was suddenly just unavoidable. And things were getting bad then, with Talon and the UN and all that shit, the whole team was so close again, and you were always _right there_ -"

Gabriel stops, rubbing a hand over his face, over the hole in his cheek, cradling his cold coco.

“…and you know what happened next.”

Jack feels cold. The feeling of it makes him aware of his own body again, and it’s almost a surprise to find that he has one. He feels too big, too aware of the space between them. The distance of grey cotton between his boot and Gabriel’s knee seems traitorous.

Gabriel looks up at him. He doesn’t see the movement but suddenly both eyes are on him; dark and light.

“You remember that night after we lost Ali, when you got in the shower with all your gear on.”

It’s not a question. Jack nods.

Gabriel’s eyes are on him in the dark, light smooth over the proud curve of his cheek, the ragged flesh of his torn jaw. “I should have kissed you then.”

Jack sucks in a breath, sharp like it hurts, and Gabriel holds his wide-eyed look for a moment but then drops it back down to his hands like he’s lost his nerve.

Jack breathes out slow, and sets his mug down carefully as the room fizzes back into existence; him and Gabe, sitting on his bed. One AM. Cold coco.

Jack stretches, slides off the edge of the bed.

Gabriel looks up as Jack’s boots hit the metal floor, and Jack makes sure he catches his eyes as he says,

“Sure could do with a shower now.”

He holds Gabriel’s eyes for a moment, just long enough to see them widen, then turns towards the bathroom, reaching up to tug his sweatshirt over his head, dropping it on his way to the door.

He leaves the door open and doesn’t turn to look as he turns on the shower and strips off; boots, socks, pants, and underwear dropping in a heap on the floor.

He steps into the shower, blessedly hot despite it being the middle of the night.

He takes a breath and looks back, and Gabriel is standing in the doorway with his hand on the frame, looking at him with wide eyes. 

Jack turns to pick up the shower soap, making sure to give him a good 360, let him see what he’d be getting himself into: the ports and implants round his knees, purple burns smeared across his jaw and down his left side, the thick surgical scar along his spine. Older ones that Gabriel would recognise; slashes, bullet holes, the shiny lightning stamp of a pulse blast across his hip. The white hair over his chest, belly, ass and legs, stretch marks, the inch or so of softness round his stomach that wasn’t there years before.

He hears Gabriel’s boots on the tile as he crosses into the room, realises he was holding his breath and lets it out slow.

There’s a pause, quiet and unreadable, and Jack closes his eyes and keeps rubbing the soap around, doesn’t look back. Then the sound of the falling water changes minutely and he feels Gabriel’s hand on his shoulder, hot and broad and grounding, and Jack turns to face him.

Gabriel is standing half in the glass box of the shower cubicle, the water turning the front of his hoodie dark and soaking his jeans, looking at Jack like he’s the sun coming up on a night they thought they wouldn’t live through.

He still got his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and he moves it up to cup his neck and Jack can barely hold his own weight.

Gabriel leans in and Jack closes his eyes, feels the hot, soft press of his lips, the scratch of his beard, gets his hands on his hips and holds him as the water soaks Gabriel’s clothes, gets between their mouths and makes his tongue taste like metal.

*

The first time mirrors the first time. 

Like _then_ , against the bathroom door, sick and sweaty and wanting was happening parallel to _now_ , in bed, dripping wet and face to face on their sides, Gabriel still mostly clothed with his boots knocking against Jack’s ankles, shirt pulled up and twisted awkwardly over one shoulder just to feel his heat, their hands moving slick between them, half kissing and half just breathing each other in.

Jack guessed at some point things would be a little more structured and a little less desperate, but now this is _perfect, perfect, you’re perfect_.

*

There have been too many secrets to stomach keeping another one, and the others find out as it comes.

The first time is an accident.

It’s a few days later and they’ve barely been out of Jack’s room; working things out and working each other over like nothing exists outside of them, outside of the half-light and heat of learning things they’ve known forever.

It’s late, somewhere around midnight, and they’re in the rec-room kitchen making enough maccy cheese to make up for several days’ worth of missed meals.

Gabriel is at the stove stirring the industrial-size vat on the hob, and Jack says something stupid and lewd about the squelchy sound of it that gets a proper belly laugh out of him.

“Man, you are so fucking full of shit.” Gabriel says, still grinning and rubbing a hand over his beard, skirting the edge of the wide hole in his neck that he’s sporting today. “You get all the guys with lines like that?”

“Seems to work pretty good on you.” Jack is grinning at him, leaning against the work surface with his ankles crossed, holding a hot pink mug that reads THIS MIGHT BE WINE in fancy cursive.

“Oh yeah?” Gabriel raises an eyebrow at him, steps closer to put his hands on Jack’s hips “You think you got me, huh?”

Jack slides his big hands round Gabe’s waist, pulls him between his legs as Gabriel leans into his space, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

Gabriel presses in to kiss him, easy and slow, and Jack’s just sliding a hand under his shirt to hold him when there’s a clunk and the door to the hallway opens.

They jolt apart and Gabriel jumps back bodily, as if that would make any difference now, and just sort of stands there like a startled cat in the middle of the room, staring wide-eyed at the intruder.

Hana Song stands in the doorway in sweats and a StarCraft t-shirt, holding an empty cereal bowl and looking at the two of them like an extremely high teenager might look at an extremely hard math problem.

“Wow. Ok.” She closes her mouth and nods, “Ok. Cool cool cool” walks over to the breakfast cupboard and starts pulling out a box of Lucio-Ohs.

Jack is still just sort of staring wide-eyed when Gabriel starts laughing; a loud snort he was clearly trying to hold in that devolves into ridiculous rusty giggling.

Jack has just begun to register the smell when D.va turns with a mouthful of cereal and says “Hey, are you burning something?”

Gabe lunges for the pot,

“Oh, _shit!_ ”

*

The next morning they walk into the mess hall for breakfast side by side and all the old guard turn to stare at them. D.va, Tracer and Lucio are sitting in a tight little huddle by the TV, at least pretending they’re not looking.

They plunk down at the table and Gabriel reaches for the cereal as Jack goes for the toast, and Torbjorn says evenly “Welcome back. Haven’t seen you two in a while.”

Ana is watching them with narrowed eyes and Reinhardt looks like he’s in physical pain trying not to say something.

Gabriel sits back and sticks most of a pastry in his mouth, eyeing them easily as he chews for a moment.

“Been busy.”

Ana raises her eyebrows at them, cutting a neat square off the butter with her fork “Something better than the group training yesterday, I assume. Hard to imagine-”

And that seems to be the longest Reinhardt can stay silent for, practically red in the face with effort as he booms “I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU MY FREINDS!”

Ana winces and the youngsters all look over as his huge voice cuts over the morning cartoons, and Reinhardt continues with a hand pressed to his chest- “It is so good to see you both happy and fulfilled, though I never would have guessed _this_ would be the reason for-”

Gabriel is already laughing and Tobjorn elbows Reinhardt with his metal arm, “Christ, shut yer blabbering mouth you big buffoon-”

They ribbing continues for a while, and as Torbjorn is saying something stern to Gabe and Reinhardt keeps monologuing unperturbed, Ana catches Jack’s sleeve, still with that pinch of confusion on her forehead.

“Were you-” She stops, lowers her voice, “Was this going on the whole time?”

“No.” Jack exhales and keeps his voice level, but she must see something in the way he says it because her eyes soften the way they did when she was breaking hard news, and she nods, squeezing his wrist and giving it two firm pats as she sits back.

“I’m happy for you, Jack. Both of you.”

*

Daily life on the base barely changes, and Jack is grateful for it.

More of Gabriel’s things turn up in his room one by one; a toothbrush, pain pills, a hoodie on the chair, underwear, a book, along with Gabriel himself most nights.

At first Jack is so uncomfortably aware that everyone knows, and that they know he knows they know, but after a while it dawns on him that no-one really cares. He’s not the Strike Commander any more. No one is reporting on his every move, no lawyers and image-consultants trying to police his every waking moment.

Gabriel seems easy with every aspect of it, and Jack is grateful that he can trust him to take over and laugh off or divert any more prying questions about _when, why, how_.

Even the tiniest bit of public physical affection (Jack’s hand on Gabriel’s waist, Gabe leaning on Jack’s shoulders from behind the sofa as he talks to Zenyatta) feels indulgent to Jack, and he has to remind himself that this is normal, this is fine, and they’re actually incredibly restrained compared to a lot of couples he’s known. Gerard and Amelie had been _revolting_ for those first few months.

*

One night they’re lying in Jack’s bed with the lights off, the sun low and sherbet orange outside the open window as they pass Jack’s last cigarette back and forth, and Gabriel says low “what woulda happened if I kissed you back then?”

Jack holds in the smoke and watches the papers on the table stir in the breeze, thinking.

“I don’t know” he says finally, smoke curling out with his words. He watches it drift upward, turning in the air as it’s caught in the current from the window.

“Those first few years with Vincent… I couldn’t wish those away. I'd be lying if I said that I could. But then again, maybe if we’d just been friends I’d still know him now.”

Gabriel hums, eyes up on the ceiling. “Maybe we’d have been together all this time, maybe we woulda broken up a few times. Maybe one of us would be dead for real. Maybe we woulda had to keep it secret, or not and the UN would have skipped over us for command and history would be totally different. I still wish I had, but who knows what woulda happened.”

Jack looks over at him in the dark; the arch of his profile, the little bit of tension between his eyebrows. He can see his teeth grinding through the maw in his cheek, the flesh around it shifting uneasily.

Jack pushes himself up on his arm, and the movement pulls Gabriel out of whatever minefield his mind is dragging him through. 

“You know what I want to happen now?” Jack rolls over to cover his body with his own, resting his forearms on either side of Gabriel’s head.

Gabriel sighs, mouth ticking up into a grin as he lets his thighs fall open, lets Jack slot between his legs as he puts his arms round his neck.

“Pretty sure I can guess.”

*

McCree is set to arrive at the base at 1400 hours and Gabriel has barely been solid all day.

Jack knows when to touch and when to give him space, and he hangs back as much as he can, just stroking a hand over the small of his back every now and then, asking if he wants to eat.

By the time the hanger doors are open to the sea and Tracer is landing the transport outside, filling the space with engine noise and whirling dust, Gabriel has pretty much got his body under control.

Jack hangs back with the others, just watching as the ramp drops and out lumbers that goddamn cowboy, bigger and broader and hairier than he’d been before, but still a silhouette it was hard to forget.

Winston had briefed McCree on the situation, Jack knew, but still McCree stops dead when he sees the black outline of Reaper at the bottom of the ramp. He pulls his hat off and presses it to his chest, and Gabe closes the last few feet.

Gabriel stops at a wary distance, and McCree still seems rooted to the spot, wide-eyed. He says some things Jack can’t hear, and Reaper replies. McCree’s face scrunches up and he takes a step back, and Jack sees Mercy’s fingers tighten on the railing by his side, but suddenly McCree sways forward and wraps Gabriel up in a bear hug, pressing his face into his shoulder as Gabriel holds him tight and thumps his back with his fist.

Mercy relaxes minutely, and Jack decides now’s as a good a time as ever and ambles over to them, hands in his pockets.

McCree sniffs and scrubs his hand over his eyes as they break apart, not seeing Jack yet.

“Long time, McCree. Glad to see you’ve still got your hat.”

Gabriel reaches out and pulls Jack over with an arm round his waist, grinning wide.

“Oh yeah, Jack’s still kicking too.”

McCree looks between them, at Gabriel’s hand on him, and his eyes get even wider.

“Holy fucking _shit_ , Boss. Holy _fucking_ shit.”

*

Jack jolts awake with the sound of beating wings ringing in his head, the tang of burning plastic and TNT sharp in his nose, and throws himself sideways with a grunt. He hits the floor hard and rolls, upright by the door before the room even starts to come into focus.

_-room, my room, watchpoint-_

There’s a body in his bed, big and dark and still, and _-it’s Gabriel, Gabriel’s here, why is- Gabriel’s -_

Gabriel is grey and ripped up, still and unmoving, and Jack is reaching for him, tears hot on his face-

“Gabriel-” His voice sounds rough and creaking, coming out as a dry hiccupping rumble as he presses his face into Gabriel’s chest, feels his hot, dead hands wrap around his back,

“Gabriel, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”

“Ssshhhh, it’s ok” He murmurs, voice thick with sleep, hands smoothing up Jack’s spine and through his hair.

“It’s ok, I’m right here. You’re ok.”

*

Most days, Gabriel’s pain is manageable. 

It’s not pleasant, but the physical therapy and medication Mercy’s developing for him keep it to a low-level ache that he can work around. Besides, he’s had enough practice with the constant joint pain the SEP had left him with, as well as the multiple med bay stays that probably collectively added up to years of his life.

Some days, though.

Jack has just got out of a gym date with Rein, and comes back to his room with a towel round his neck, flicks the light on and starts rooting around for fresh clothes.

Gabriel was napping when he left a few hours back, and it doesn’t really strike him as odd that the bed is empty now.

Not until Jack hears someone groan, tight and strained and hurting, and he lunges for the bathroom door, slapping the light on.

Gabriel is on the floor under the sink; a writhing, steaming mass of jutting joints and bone, ribs splayed against the floor like a fan, and sections of his body are just _gone_ , lost to the seething black smoke around him.

“ _Shit_ , Gabriel-”

Jack drops to his knees and pulls Gabriel’s head up from where it’s pressed face down into the tile and tries to manoeuvre him onto his lap. Gabriel’s face is drawn tight with pain, eyes screwed shut and the sticky lacquer of tears streaking his face. A sound pushes out of him as Jack moves him, somewhere between a sob and the thick, strangled sound of someone who would be screaming if they had the lungs to do it.

Gabriel’s hand-held is on the floor by the toilet, and Jack lunges for it with a shaking hand, and hits the speed dial on Mercy.

After the shots, it’s less bad. The bow-tight steel-cord tension of Gabriel’s body starts to ease, and he relaxes into Jack’s hold, teeth starting to chatter as his jaw un-clenches and Jack holds his head steady, murmuring low- “C’mon big guy- c’mon sweetheart you’re ok…”

Mercy had explained it to him, once. That Gabriel looked the way he did because the nanites took the blueprint for his body from his mind, and Gabriel’s mind remembered dying.

He carried his mortal wounds with him every day, and sometimes, if he was particularly tired or stressed, or something triggered a flashback, it would trip the muscle memory of exactly what had happened to his body in the explosion. In reality he’d died in seconds, but the trauma of it and Gabriel’s malfunctioning body could keep him right on the knife edge of death for hours; slowly disintegrating piece by piece until he was just a thick, boiling smog of pain.

I’m working on it, Mercy said, and Jack believed her.

After she’s packed up her trauma kit and told Jack to update her in an hour, giving his arm a tight, reassuring squeeze on the way out, Jack scoops up as much of Gabriel as he can and carries him over to the sofa, the black miasma of the rest of his body following lazily.

He stays there for hours, until he falls asleep; Gabriel’s head in his lap as he dozes, body slowly re-congealing as Jack strokes over his buzzed hair, cartoons on quiet on the TV, throwing dancing candy colours over their bodies as the day dims around them.

*

The idea of a vacation comes up after a mission.

Most of the Strike Team has been mobilized for a mission in Mexico City, a raid on a Talon tech centre that Gabriel had provided information on.

Standing side by side with Reaper in his full gear, mask on and coat curling into black smoke around his boots, Jack feels invincible.

Reaper’s uniform is a little different from before; the symbol hanging from his belt is now the Overwatch insignia, and the outline of it is pressed into the leather of his coat, spanning across his broad back like a biker’s colours.

As the haze of camouflage around their jet fizzes out and the ramp begins to creak open, letting the heat and noise and dust of the city into the hold, Reaper knocks his armoured shoulder against 76’s.

“Knock em’ dead, Soldier.”

Afterwards, when the safehouse is a blown-out husk and the surviving Talon members have been dragged into vans and ambulances by the ground team, the Strike Team are sitting in a fast food place opposite the scene having a “debrief”, which involves lounging around a peeling lino table strewn with hefty weapons and greasy food, stuffing quesadillas into their mouths as they talk.

Tracer has her gangly neon legs up on the table and Winston is perched on a tiny plastic chair that creaks dangerously under his weight, picking uneasily at the dripping taco in his hand. Ana leans on her rifle as she wedges almost an entire burrito into her mouth in one go. Mercy had refused to eat the food at all, producing a tupperware of avocado salad from seemingly nowhere as D.va and Lucio throw bits of churro at each other.

“- _and_ you managed not to blow up your MEKA for the first time in four missions, good job.” Ana says, side eyeing D.va as she flaps a hand at her, mouth too full for a comeback.

76 can’t seem to keep his eyes off Reaper; the way he’s lounging in his chair with an arm over the back, knees spread wide and taking up space like he owns it.

“-Jack? Hey, Seventy-Six.”

Reaper’s clawed fingers snap in front of his face and Jack drags his eyes up to look at him.

“Huh?”

Gabriel pulls his mask up to his forehead and fixes him with a grin, eyes knowing.

“Jesus Christ, Jack. I said I can’t believe you didn’t end up on that bike at some point, I saw the way you were lookin’ at it. Almost like the way you look at me.”

Jack grimaces and shrugs his shoulders, “It’s sad, but I can’t _always_ make a motorbike fit into the plan.”

Gabriel hums and stuffs another handful of chips into his mouth.

“Yeah, thank fuck. That time back in the Crisis, where was it, _Mongolia_ , I thought you were gonna kill me.”

“Oh, the time with the dirt bike? Hey, that was _great_ , Gabe, don’t try and tell me you didn’t like it.”

Gabriel points a claw at him, spilling fries with his other hand,

“I thought I was gonna fucking die! I’d never been on a bike before, let alone tried to snipe with someone else’s rifle while sittin’ on the back of one!”

Jack laughs and they lapse into silence as they eat, listening to D.va complain about the smear on her mech where it’d been hit by someone Lucio booped off the roof.

“We should do that properly some time.”

“Hmm?” Gabriel said, looking over at Jack with fries sticking out of his mouth.

“Go somewhere on a bike. Like a road trip, just you and me. Take a break, go out to the country.”

Gabriel chews thoughtfully, eyes flicking over to him.

“Maybe I could be convinced.”

*

They get the leave three weeks later, and Jack realises he hasn’t done this since, well, _ever_.

He hasn’t had time for a vacation once in his entire military career. The last time was with his parents; sitting in the back seat of the truck kicking his legs, watching the smooth, sea glass fields roll by outside.

He gets a bike; electric but old school, in colours that match the jacket he promised not to wear. It’s not a cruiser, but there’s just enough room on it for two super soldiers and a tent, which is all they need.

As a favour and to avoid broadcasting their location, Tracer drops them off in the camo-jet in Wyoming. She doesn’t even land it, Jack just drives the bike straight off the ramp and onto the highway, the second of freefall flipping his stomach in the best way before they hit the ground moving, and when he checks in the mirror the jet is already misting over with static, pulling up as it blends back into the surroundings.

Despite his dramatics, Gabriel gets the hang of the bike easy, since all he has to do is hold on and not throw his weight around.

The summer is in full swing, and it’s been so long since either of them has been out of the city for anything other than missions, without the constant threat of violence. It feels alien to be living wholly in the moment; not thinking three steps ahead, not checking the surroundings constantly.

The quiet of the forests has them both jumpy at first, but after a while of no sudden gunfire, no robots and no assassins, they start to ease into it.

They pitch their tiny, lifeboat-yellow cocoon tent in clearings, in fields, under the mossy outcrop of a mountainside, and go hiking. After a long, sweaty hike up a blue pine-covered peak, they find a wide river on the way down; clear water shaped by smooth, pale boulders and a fallen tree like a huge centipede across it’s width. Jack strips off and jumps in before he can think too hard about how cold it’s gonna be, and Gabriel dunks him after following him in.

They have a little electric stove with them, but when they can they make campfires and burn their food on that instead. They spend a few clear nights lying out on their sleeping bags, watching the endless depth of the sky turn above them until Jack gets vertigo and has to close his eyes. Gabriel complains loudly about bugs, Jack sets fire to the edge of the blanket, and they break one of the tent poles having sex.

They stay out of the towns as much as they can, since neither of them could be described as inconspicuous. Missing limbs and scarring aren’t uncommon after the crisis, and Jack’s burns hide his poster-boy face a little, but there was no hiding Gabriel. Even without all that, just the sight of two 6’1 military guys walking into a room would be enough to turn heads.

When they need to go for food and gas, Gabriel usually keeps his helmet on. If he really concentrates he can seal up the hole in his face for a while, and risk it with his hood up if he’s feeling lucky.

Today is one of those days.

After the Tent Pole Incident they have to venture into a supplies store to buy a replacement, and while Jack is dealing with it at the counter, Gabriel hangs back and browses, keeping his face away from the CCTV in the corner.

He hangs around in the yellow rows of the ammunition section for a bit, then wanders over to the sparse souvenir shelves by the front window, looking at the faded postcards and novelty t-shirts. There’s a particularly good one with a big, bloody bite-mark graphic that says ‘I got mauled by the Shunka Warak’in and all I got was this lousy t-shirt’.

There’s an old white man in a flannel jacket a few isles away who’s been watching him for a while, and Reaper picks up a Yellowstone mug, pretending he doesn’t see him walking over.

“You gunna buy that, boy?” The man stops a good foot into his personal space, and is looking up at him with a look Gabriel has been getting from old white men since he was a kid.

“Doubt it.” Gabe says, turning it over in his hand a few more times for good measure before slotting it back in the shelf. The man is on the side of his good eye, and Gabriel keeps his head forward, eyes on the shelf.

“Then I guess you better put it back unless you intend to.”

Gabriel lets out a long sigh through his nose, and turns to look him at him.

The man is short, red and square, and his eyebrows fold in as Gabriel turns both eyes on him; one white and one red.

“You ain’t from ‘round here, are you?”

“Nope” Reaper says, and grins “My boyfriend is though, you should ask him about it.”

It’s just as the man’s spongey face begins to contort into something loud that Jack grabs Gabriel by the hip and hauls him out of the shop, bag swinging on his arm as they head for the bike in the lot outside.

The old guy is lurching out of the door, hand reaching behind him to his belt as Jack revs the engine and Gabriel vaults onto the bike, laughing-

“ _-Go go go go go go_ -”

-tires screeching as they jerk out of the carpark and onto the road, Gabe wrapping himself around Jack and giving the guy the finger over his shoulder as the store shrinks behind them.

They’ve cleared the town and the surrounding forest before Gabriel’s laughter dies down, and Jack slows to a comfortable cruise.

“I ain’t from fucking _Montana_ , asshole.” Jack says, though he’s still grinning, voice muffled inside his helmet.

He feels Gabe shrug against him, “Country’s country. I really thought you were gonna fucking deck that guy in parking lot though, I’m kinda disappointed.”

Jack grins as they sail up a smooth bend, the yellow splatter of wild flowers bobbing in their slipstream.

“You like that? Me jumping in to your rescue?”

“Fuck yeah. Coulda carried me out princess-style too, go whole hog.”

Jack laughs and it feels overwhelming, the press of the wind, the sun, Gabriel’s arms round him.

“God, I love you.”

There’s a second, then Gabriel squeezes him so tight it’s hard to get a breath in, and presses his visored face into Jack’s shoulder.

“Yeah. Yeah, I love you too.”

***

_**Pyriscence:** An ecological adaptation exhibited by some plants, in which the maturation and releasing of seeds is triggered by the heat of a forest fire. Out of destruction, comes life._

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: at the start of the conversation in Jack's room, Gabriel briefly explains having a dubiously-consensual sexual experience with a man in a bathroom at a party, that devolves into a physical fight. It is not gone into in detail, but it starts after “So, I followed him into the bathroom" and ends after 'The way he says that word, slow'.
> 
> **
> 
> So you probably noticed the lack of that family Gabriel now has in canon, gotta say that's mainly because I couldn't be arsed to flesh out any more OC's.
> 
> Kudos and comments appreciated, come tell me what you thought! :)))))))


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